


Particles

by ChatoyantPenumbra



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Angst, Dimension Travel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Bonds Beyond Time, Post-Canon, Post-Dark Side Of Dimensions, Post-Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 04:27:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15573756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChatoyantPenumbra/pseuds/ChatoyantPenumbra
Summary: After Team 5D's splits, Yusei can find little comfort in the world with which he's left.





	Particles

**Author's Note:**

> While listening to Nothing But Thieves, I came across "Particles" and was hit so hard by how much it applies to Yusei's depression post-5D's. To clarify, I really think that the “addiction” that Yusei struggles with is overworking, burying himself in upgrading his D-Wheel, coding, making improvements to Fortune, etc. when he has to get out of his own headspace. 
> 
> A glimpse into how synchroshipping isn't all happiness and fluff, as many of my other pieces up to this point have been. Please do give this song a listen because this whole fic is inspired by it!
> 
>  
> 
> ["Particles" by Nothing But Thieves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeu2Y3mdSkU)

The loneliness isn’t easy.

 

It never has been.

 

But as Yusei sits at his office desk and stares sideways out over Neo Domino engulfed in night, sparkling and beautiful with city lights in every direction, he can think of little else other than how long it’s been since he felt like he’s truly been seen by someone in this metropolis full of people.

 

It eats at him, eats and gnaws at the back of his consciousness until it’s chewed its way up to the forefront of his mind and he can’t dare put it out of his headspace, like it’s locked as a permanent quality of his character. The depression has been there ever since the beginning and will likely remain until the moment he breathes his last, unshakable and vising so strong that he’d sooner tear out his own heart trying to remove it than the actual root of the problem.

 

He tips his head back so his nape rests uncomfortably against the top of his desk chair, and the boring ceiling panels offer no comfort as he tries to just breathe and block out the chaos and paradoxical emptiness of his heart. He had attempted to fill the void and quiet the unrest with incessant work, replacing his being with a programming doyen and trying to remember nothing else other than the societal issues of Neo Domino, but as it proved, overworking left him even more empty than he’d been before.

 

He’s exhausted. Unfulfilled. Lost.

 

Yusei stretches out his hands over the desk in front of him, aggravating the pain in his wrists of countless hours of typing. He contemplates crashing yet again on the couch just across the office instead of bothering to go home. After all, there’s nothing there. No one waiting for him. Bruno, Crow, Jack—they’re all gone now. It’s an empty home, full of old, bittersweet memories that no longer keep him warm.

 

But even now, he knows they’re just following their hearts. It’s better this way, somehow, he tells himself.

 

He decides he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway even if he were to return home to his own bed. He hasn’t seen the thing in what seems like a year; it doesn’t smell like him anymore.

 

The Chief focuses on his breathing again, in and out, deeper in and slower out, deeper and slower and slower and deeper until he can feel hot droplets on his collarbones, wet and radiating sorrow and _god, he just can’t breathe no matter how much he tries._

 

His elbows hit the desk, and he’s clutching his aching head as trembling seizes his whole body for its own. A sob rips from his lips, quiet and stifled as if even so much as a sound escaping him will strike guilt into the hearts of his friends, as if they are somehow even close enough to bear witness to the misery he has to endure now.

 

But they’re not. They’ll never hear the sound of him crumpling forward uselessly as he weeps, never see how his tanzanite eyes turn bloodshot from the force of the tears, never feel how he yanks at his dress shirt to get the collar unbuttoned and tie undone because he just can’t _fucking breathe—_

 

Yusei has no one around him. The Yusei gear has no gears to turn. No people to put faith in him, to depend on him, to trust him. He’s exhausting himself spinning around and around and around in circles, affecting no one and acting in benefit of nothing, not even himself.

 

He’s lost purpose.

 

He weeps.

 

Warmth blooms in the shape of a hand on his shoulder, gentle and firm. He knows the touch, but he can’t face who he knows is standing behind him, not now, not in this state. The hand guides, a gold ring scintillating in the low glow of his desktop and backlit keyboard as the Pharaoh manoeuvres the Chief to rotate towards him. Another hand joins the first, combing over his reddened, sticky cheeks and drying those streams marring them.

 

Yusei’s hands raise, beginning to push the loving touch away. Atem can’t see him like this. Not like _this,_ not as a mess, a fucking disaster so lost in his own sorrow that he has the nerve to forget about how _fiercely_ the Pharaoh has loved him since they came together.

 

He’s nothing but useless, selfish, greedy, inconsiderate.

 

_It’s driving you away, piece by piece, day by day..._

 

What of Atem’s feelings? What’s it like for him to have to see Yusei like this when he’s given absolutely everything to their relationship—all of the patience and guidance and wisdom a person could ever ask for, and yet Yusei is immovable, locking himself away as a punishment to himself and everyone in his midst. How can he do this? How can he treat the only person who’s not only broken the laws separating dimensions and time to seek him, but also the only one who’s remained at his side when it would have been so easy and justified for Atem to let go of all of the living world, like this?

 

“I’m sorry—” Yusei barely chokes it out when Atem knows he’s asking forgiveness, withdrawing his self-destructive tendencies for just long enough to let him back in, and the Pharaoh captures the fleeting opportunity before it can disappear again into another undulation of self-hatred and self-sabotage.

 

“Come, Yusei.”

 

The King’s lips press tenderly against his, lightly and just long enough to convey the intentions behind his actions, and in the breathlessness Yusei is led safely to his feet. Warmth overcomes them, gold and benevolent, and the dizziness that hasn’t touched him for many months while slipping like smoke into the wind of the fabric of dimensions manages to graze its icy fingers against his equilibrium just once.

 

He closes his teary eyes, surrendering to the grasp of his lover and the knowledge that he’ll be kept safe in the transition, and by the time he opens them again, the air has changed. It’s warm, even when the night has long since settled over the bed chamber. It smells vaguely of desert sand and incense, familiar, yet all the same things he knows he’s never experienced in this life before he met Atem.

 

His lab coat is coaxed from his shoulders, deft fingers guiding his tie also haphazardly to the floor. When his side is pressed against the silk sheets, he feels Atem wrap completely around him, pulling his head into a cradle against the crook of his neck.

 

The feeling of safety conquers Yusei, and the tears whip like cords, flowing freely onto bronze skin.

 

He’s nothing, nothing like he once was. His confidence is shattered, his faith broken, his meaning crushed. A shadow of a ghost. A mere perfunctory fragment of himself. He’s so weak now that he even has to be cradled like this, _like a child,_ to feel any sliver of comfort.

 

He is the gear without paraphernalia. He’s lost purpose.

 

_Put me back together however you want._

 

“How can you—” A sob racks through his being, cutting his airflow effectively in half. “—I’m not what you wanted; I’m useless now, I can’t do anything for anyone—”

 

_My mind plays tricks._

 

Atem quiets him with a touch that battles the roar of pandemonium in his veins, in his ears, in his chest, rattling like unstable structures in the midst of a destructive earthquake. He presses his lips compassionately to Yusei’s forehead, and like his strength on the battlefield, the Pharaoh commands everything in his lover to still with the mere exertion of his stabilizing presence.

 

Yusei weeps, and the King kisses him again, tasting salt and sorrow.

 

“You have done more than the world could ever rightfully ask of you, and given more of yourself to everything around you than it has ever been able to give back. It’s time you were afforded rest, Yusei.”

 

The Chief breathes shallowly against the Pharaoh’s neck, respiration coming out in short, struggled huffs, and he finally manages to wrestle it back enough that he can bring himself to look Atem in his eyes. Amethyst awaits him, soft and understanding.

 

It hits him like the explosion of Moment itself, that Atem has always been exactly what he needs to forfeit this feeling of hopelessness—

 

_If I need to rearrange my particles, I will for you._

**Author's Note:**

> Agh I poured so many feelings into this. Please let me know what you thought of it!


End file.
